Grenade Pin

Clammers found cases with 126 grenades in New Bedford.  Some were live.   They were safely detonated and no one was hurt.
~
That reminds me of an old college incident, in James House at UMASS.  The Vietnam War was in play, and a crazy vet was visiting his friend in the dorm room next door.
~
In those days, a lot of guys would come back from the war, fresh from firefights and other horrific shit that only happened a week or so ago.  One day, you are on patrol, firing off your M1 in DaNang at VietCong hell bent on killing you, and the next week you are hanging out on campus at Amherst, MA.  I always felt bad for these guys who didn't have a college deferment, and was enrolled in Army ROTC preparing to go myself.
~
This guy was really jacked in a lot of ways, and we all were leary of him.  It was my freshman year and he used to drill Aaron Boykin and myself when we had our uniforms on to go to ROTC class.    But that's another story.
~
One day, he came into my room with a grenade in his hand, stuffed it into the hand of my roommate, Jeff Middleton, pulled the pin, and told him to hold the lever, or we would all die.  Then he left the room.  Jeff and I stood there with a WTF look on our faces.
~
After about thirty seconds of standing there stunned, I said to Jeff that we should carefully take the grenade outside, walk it across the athletic fields, and heave it into the woods.  Jeff stood there ackwardly holding the thing with his hand clasped on the detonation lever.  We were too dazed to be afraid.
~
Before we got the plan into action,  the crazy vet came back, put the pin back into the grenade, quietly took it with him. and left without a word.    We never mentioned it again.... like it never happened.
~
I often wonder whether that grenade was live, and what would have happened if it blew up on the edge of the intramural field.  My guess is that if it was a dud, the vet wouldn't have come back so soon to take it back.  He would have let us sweat a lot longer.
~
It's one of the many things in my life that could have gone drastically wrong...... but didn't.... so I'm sitting here blogging today.  There is enough stuff that could have gone wrong and did.... but I'm here anyway.

MattyL said...

this blog is the ultra balls.

-- Matthew Lyons